The invention relates to the field of application program development, and in particular to methods of testing candidate new versions of user-visible features of a graphical user interface (GUI) forming part of an application deployed widely on user computers.
Existing methods for developing new graphical user interfaces use selective customer interviews prior to or during user interface development in order to identify areas of development. Feedback from the interviews helps guide the design of graphical elements and functionality. For example, users may provide information about a preference for data being presented in one form or another, or about different possible sequences of GUI operations that could be used to perform some higher-level operation, such as an operation of configuring data storage devices in a storage system management application. Once changes to the user interface are made, they are then rolled out in bulk to an entire base of customers.